Dear Readers, anyone who knows me purely by my online pseudonym having never met me, or who knows me in person who reads this blog, I am asking you please to pray for my recovery from a health crisis.
So that I can return to work, daily functioning, and my profession in physical therapy, to my state in life in marriage, as a provider, that God’s will be done no matter what, and that I can continue to sustain the faith and fortitude I need to persevere through this as long as it lasts, whether short term or long term.
Also, this post might shed light on why I’ve been waxing and waning lately about the mysteries of suffering. It was part of my own strategy of coping.
Six months ago I was working in the rehab department at a very understaffed nursing home/skilled rehab facility, with a high volume patient load, high turn over rate in our department, and daily chaos within our rehab team.
The work load wore me out at the end of each day, but in a good way and that itself was manageable. I was happy with my income and all that affords, and in my clinical care of patients. People who have had strokes, heart attacks, surgeries, neurological illnesses, orthopedic issues, chronic disability, etc.
But the facility and departmental chaotic breakdown in basic professionalism stressed me out to the point I developed severe GI symptoms so bad I could not work.
Months later I’d establish it was gastritis which then led to diverticulitis. I’d learn that I have a few small diverticula but nothing too bad, but those conditions combined led to three months of daily sickness, often needing to lie back in bed during the day, otherwise doing a lot of walking and tweaking my diet to heal. That itself was a long ordeal.
After I left my job I lost my health insurance. Due to bloody stools and chest pains, with my concerns of internal bleeding, I went one day to the ER at St John’s Catholic hospital, which resulted in my fortune of being approved for a year of charity care under this Catholic health system, thanks be to God, so I was able to see a GI doc and eventually get an endoscopy and colonoscopy.
However, the stress kept escalating like a perfect storm. Car problems, then the car was stolen, financial hardship, bought a new used car, a Honda Civic, that turned out needing repairs.
The stress escalated to a level that is hard to describe, but it was like a state of PTSD shell shock, with strange weird pains appearing daily and migrating.
Another bout of chest pain sent me again to the ER resulting in being hospitalized and given a cardiac stress test which came back good with no problems. Likely due to the GI issues plus extreme stress.
The saga continues. I don’t know if it was from the new level of extreme stress after the ordeal of the car being stolen, resulting in us having no car for weeks taking Ubers, or the ER visit and first time in my life being hospitalized for a possible serious heart problem (as of now I now have no serious concern with my heart), or a perfect storm combination of all these events and factors, but I had a sudden outbreak of nerve and muscle pains through both arms and legs.
It started when we went to St Mary’s, KS in early May for the consecration of the new SSPX church the Immaculata, during their Vespers service later that day after the consecration and first Mass in the new church. Bishop Fellay was proceeding out of the church passing by us, and almost immediately at that moment the nerve pains started up my feet and legs.
Later that night they were half way up my legs, the next day I had burning pain up both legs past my thighs. I woke up the next morning with the same nerve pain and muscle weakness in both arms from my shoulders through my hands.
The level of extreme stress then climbed even higher. My doctor ordered vascular and nerve studies. Getting the tests and results took 3 more months until now, since I’m a charity care patient which limits access to doctors who can schedule you sooner.
Thank God both tests came back clear, zero peripheral vascular disease or issues, zero neuropathy, and zero indication of serious nerve compression at the spinal cord/spine level.
The doctor has suspected these are stress responses but will not pursue anymore a diagnosis, saying I need health insurance even though I’m debilitated by the pain. The charity care IS my insurance, and the charity office said they would approve more tests as long as he orders them, but he won’t because he insists they still will not approve more. He is either mistaken or blowing off my need for diagnosis.
A few weeks after the nerve pain outbreak started in my limbs, I developed redness and pain across the top of my face, the doctor saying it might be rosacea, which I now think it was. My sister had it. I already have a chronic facial pain condition from a nerve compression injury six years ago that includes facial muscle cramps, which I’m used to, but this new combination of pain in my face was intense combined with the new arms and legs pain. I’d step out in the sun and heat for a few minutes, and a fire-like burning would spread across my face that required ice compresses to get it to subside enough to not feel like I was going crazy from the combined pain.
Needless to say, the health crisis kept escalating. Daily panicky anxiety set in, since almost every square inch of my body (including by then aches in much of my back which I rarely get in the past) was in constant pain, especially nerve pain.
It felt like a demonic assault on my body, though I embraced the theory this is a psychosomatic state from extreme stress. So I reached out to a counselor, also for medication, and joined a gym to basically give myself rehab therapy. I also went back to strict low carb but this time for a while carnivore zero carb, to reduce inflammation and psychological symptoms.
If you ever find yourself in such a medical crisis that includes a psychological level to it, getting strenuous exercise and cutting down on carbs can go along way in stabilizing yourself.
And thank God this protocol I’ve put myself on has brought the stress level down a lot. Plus what I think was rosacea cleared up, the pain from that resolving to my regular level of chronic pain from the old injury. That resolution in my face alone felt like a miracle.
However the pains in all four limbs continues daily for three months now. I have nothing close to a diagnosis.
My one line of hope is the fact that six years ago, after a similarly extreme pattern of stresses, including the facial nerve injury, I had the exact same pattern of sudden pain outbreak in my limbs that lasted about six months but then completely resolved.
I suspect these are psychosomatic symptoms with some underlying nerve issues in my neck and back. My theory and hope is I have minor nerve pinching from the vertebrae due to arthritis. But also by tense muscles pinching the nerves, combined with severe stress, resulting in a state of inflammation in my limbs and altered pain pathways in my brain, that will eventually resolve like it did six years ago.
To that end I’m doing stress management, gym, swimming a lot at the gym, a lot of stretching, some calisthenics core work, weights, use of the hot tub and dry sauna, and now licensed massage therapy of my upper and lower back.
Almost all of my life I have been healthy enough to fully engage in work and life’s activities. When you are healthy or at least have stable health, you are always thinking of solving life’s problems, your goals, and what activities you want to do every week. You plan your evenings and weekends. Your life is about living. You are above ground looking forward.
But when you are in a chronic state of debilitated health, especially if it is consumed by pain, your frame of mind shifts from that of a regular person to that of a sick patient. Your focus changes to surviving the crisis.
Your goal is simply to recover your health at least enough to regain normal life. It is like one day you are taking a walk and fall down a deep, narrow hole in the ground, and feel stuck at the bottom looking up at the sky, constantly trying to get out of that hole. Back to life.
There are different levels of pain and suffering. I’ve had my fair share throughout my life. But possibly the worst level is a state of misery, or agony. It feels literally like God snatching you up from the normal levels of suffering on Earth, things like cars getting stolen, or a bout of sinusitis, or daily tiredness and frustrations.
But then placing you in a holding cell inside purgatory consumed by fires, that state seeming to go on very slowly with no end in sight. That, I can say, is the misery of extreme, debilitating pain.
With my background in science, health care, and physical therapy, I know my symptoms point to a few possibilities my doctor (I’m searching for a new doctor) seems either disinterested or incompetent in considering to be the cause, or unwilling to because I am under the charity care program.
Possibilities include spinal stenosis (the spinal cord becomes compressed eventually resulting in being wheel chair bound or paralyzed), radiculopathies (serious nerve compressions which tend to be disabling), multiple sclerosis, lupus, or restless leg syndrome (chronic pain condition that can also affect both arms, that results in extreme anxiety due to extreme chronic insomnia, that gets worse over time for life). But knowing these conditions, there are already factors lacking that might exclude each one, such that the reality is a stress reaction.
My prayer continues to be recovery. How I recovered six years ago. Please join me in this. A lot depends on getting the help I need to have a diagnosis as soon as is possible, which could hopefully be psychosomatic pain originating from minor back issues, or God forbid a serious physical illness. Time will tell.
Until then, my task is to push through this process and the pain and go back to work in physical therapy in the next couple months, even if I still don’t have an answer and keeping walking around feeling like my limbs or on fire burning the whole day.
As long as I can basically function, and master a schedule around these symptoms while working, and in this new current state in my body, I think I can push through it. Work in PT home health with very little workplace chaos, relatively low physical requirements, setting my own schedule. And just force myself back into regular daily life outside of work including my hobbies (hiking, fishing, gardening) and interests (like writing a third book).
All of this is driving home to me that this life is a tiny sliver of time compared to where we go for eternity, based on how we live this one life, whether heaven or hell, that all suffering no matter how crazy bad it is, or for how long, is purely for our redemption and salvation.
That happiness is not in maximal pleasure and minimal pain, but rather in a state of charity, peace, and joy that usually requires great suffering as the medium by which we achieve that true happiness.
That when you really suffer hard core, as in on the level of agony, that forces you whether you like it or not to go to a new depth of repentance and personal change, that everyone short of someone who is already a Saint needs, to push you more interior and into a contemplative state.
I’m understanding better how some of those saints who suffered horrible illnesses rose to a level of great spiritual happiness and sanctity. That it took a kind of annihilation of self, passively willed by God, or perhaps actively willed by God, to unite more perfectly with God.
And here is a fact I learned recently about St. Joseph. The foster father of Christ Himself became paralyzed before his death from debilitating arthritis. Paralyzed.
I will keep you updated. If you would like to give feedback on this, you can email me at:
JosephOstermeir@gmail.com